


feet touch stone (and they're off!)

by Rayellah



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, M/M, so it's a character in this, the mountain is telling the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3133001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rayellah/pseuds/Rayellah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not a story about the mountain.</p><p>No, no, no.</p><p>It is <i>not</i> about the mountain.</p><p>(And I don't think the mountain will ever forgive Bilbo Baggins for that.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	feet touch stone (and they're off!)

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from a friend: _the hobbit_ as told by erebor

The mountain has waited for Bilbo Baggins for a long time.

It didn't always know that was who it was waiting for, of course. But long before it had ever met a Hobbit, it waited for a particular Hobbit.

The mountain is technically nameless. It has _been_ named before ( _you_ might know it as Erebor, as the Lonely Mountain) but it is not its names-given. Names are for the Dwarves that move through its veins, between its bones. Names are what Dwarves give its parts, breaking it down into sections, mine here, live there, cook over here, work between those sections where it's safe, that's right. Rule from here. Names are just syllables that roll on the tongue. Cadence severed by teeth. The mountain bucks underneath these names like a beast under a hand it does not know, but it does not fight them, not really. Names change with the years. The mountain grows down and deep, cracks its bones, reshapes, but it does not _change_. It's always a mountain, and mountains have never _changed._

It thinks, maybe, it's time to try. But this isn't a story about the mountain. This is a story about a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. Like some stories, it has a prologue. If he lives long enough, there will be an epilogue. Not everyone lives long enough for one of those. These things haven't been decided yet anyway, and quests are dangerous.

The mountain will be there for the beginning and the end of this tale, but the middle bit will take place elsewhere. Or _has_ _taken_ place elsewhere. Or _is taking_ place elsewhere. Maybe.

This is a story about Bilbo Baggins and the prologue goes like this:

Thráin's feet touch the ground. Or maybe Thrór's feet, or Thorin's. That doesn't much matter, not really. That's not the most important part of the story. What _does_ matter is that these were Dwarven feet, feet of Import. They were Important. The capital-I of story-shaping sentience.

There have been Important people before, of course. Kingdoms rise and fall around that small change in a letter. A single trembling hand choosing whether to dot or double-cross a straight line. Kingdoms rise and fall, and the mountain... well.

The mountain will rise.

So maybe it was Thrór's feet. He was the one who _truly_ built, further down and further in. The mountain knew Thrór, felt his teeth-snapping hunger, his greed, knew his wants.

Knew him _hungry_. And the mountain was a hungry thing, too, aching to prove itself. So its heart-- named _Arkenstone_ , named _King's Jewel_ by Dwarves who, of course, name all sorts of things-- twined itself around Thrór's feet like a cat, smoothing stone paths, calling storms. (Thrór, it found, had a flair for the dramatic, especially when meeting with foreign kings.)

Thrór did not notice, however, holed in as he was. Stung, the mountain pulled itself into the mines to lick its wounds. The rain from the storms dried on the ground and Thrór stumbled, tripping over a loose bit of rock.

And then the dragon came.

Hungry.

Like the King under the Mountain, but with flame and teeth to back up its greed.

But we're still in the prologue. The prologue to the prologue.

(Stories, of course, have layers.)

(They're serpentine things.)

(They shed skins quick, hold them tight, hold them up to the light. Maybe see the foreshadowing in old, thin, dry skins.)

Durin's line will stumble again, of course, and you'll be there for it. Have patience.

The next layer goes like this: the mountain settled itself on Thráin's shoulders, became his Responsibility. And he was away from the mountain, sure, _physically_ , but not in his heart. Even far west, he remembered.

Thráin walked over stone and the mountain woke, again, woke hungry. Because Thráin was hungry, too. He didn't know it, not really, but he was. It was the curious sort of hunger, in that it sang in the same pitch as his father's mistakes.

Really, the two of them were very similar, and the mountain loved him for it.

Mountains fall in love easily, you see. They're like people in that respect. The mountain dried the rain and left blue skies for Thráin to travel and wander and walk to clear his head.

And Thráin was always able to keep on the move... but Thráin was not grateful. Again the mountain grew tired. There was an itch. There was a change building. Something was coming to the mountain, and it was not Thráin.

The mountain pulled itself into itself and considered. Three generations of Dwarven feet painted tracks across stone.

Wait. _Three_.

Thorin II (called “Oakenshield”) still walked briskly at this point in time. His footsteps had not begun to drag, yet. They would, later, when he lost himself, but for now his feet were swordstrokes, full of _intent_ and unlike his father and grandfather (and they were significant for their connection, the mountain drank their reflections from polished steel and still water, drank their thumbprints from sword-hilts and gauntlets and railings and found them all _wanting_ ) he pound-pounded through streets almost daily, full of _purpose_. The mountain grew to know him, even in absence and-- of course-- grew to love him. (Thorin loved the mountain, too.)

Then he was told, after his grandfather had died, after his father had left, after his sister-sons were born, after he started to fear his family's madness, he was _told_ by a wizard to embark on a quest. To take back the mountain.

Those words, humming like plucked lutestrings all across the land, of course reached the mountain (and the dragon) (mostly the mountain).

The Company of Thorin Oakenshield had not entered the story, yet. Not really. They were lurking offstage, in the wings, twelve voices, all stage-whispers.

 _We shall follow you,_ they said, and with a crack like a whip ( _andthey'reoff!_ ) the story woke.

You could say the mountain woke, but the mountain was not asleep.

(It woke anyway.)

And now the mountain was there, with Thorin Oakenshield, folding the roads under his feet to get him There late, dusting his journey so he'll arrive at Bag End precisely when he needs to be there.

He lost his way.

Twice.

He was meant to.

The air was dry as bones, but with the promise of rain, later. The roads were empty, for Thorin to run, the beating of footsteps like a heart.

Thorin did not run.

His footsteps were steady as he reached the Hobbit's home.

His feet dragged a little, as if he were hauling something behind him. Bodies, maybe. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Two nephews. KíliandFíli.

FíliandKíliandThorinand.

Thorinand.

 _Thorinand_ _what?_ the mountain asked.

“Bilbo Baggins, at yours,” (service, that is. Dwalin's in this case, but the message was extended to each of his unexpected guests. A Hobbit of fifty years old, more or less. Not mountainblood, of the Shire, not mountainblood storyblood story not mountain. _Story_.)

 _ThorinandHisBurglar_ , the mountain sang. _ThorinOakenshieldandBilboBaggins_.

It loved Bilbo, too, because Bilbo noticed. Bilbo tracked patterns and distance and danger. Bilbo kept a close eye on the weather and Bilbo, once, in his own head and carefully not voicing this decision to anyone, Bilbo _once_ considered the _opinion_ of the Arkenstone.

 _Yes_ , the mountain said. _Yesyesyes._

“No,” Bilbo decided. “That would be ridiculous. It's a pretty rock, nothing more.”

The life twining in Bilbo Baggins, the richness of certainty and the value of Home, seemed a direct counterbalance to Thorinand. They were harmonious and Thorin's hands trembled like the prelude to an earthquake.

Bilbo did not run.

His dagger rang with a footstep sound, but it was a spider that fell to the ground. The mountain felt the ground, felt the spider _on_ the ground, felt the spindly body of the spider on the ground, felt the dagger in the abdomen of the spider, on the ground, and felt, in that dagger, the shaking of Bilbo's hands.

(But this happens after the prologue, in the story proper.)

In the distant past, the mountain might not have noticed a spider dying in the former Greenwood. In this story, it can't _not_ notice. In this story, it drinks spider blood. It considers. It considers the concept of _sacrifice_ and the fact that it's still thirsty.

It considers the fact that it's still thirsty and the fact that Thorin, like a moon, waned. Thorin waned and FíliandKíli waned and Bilbo was here-gone-here again and the Company were disheartened and Thrór and Thráin had departed, madness taking them as far as they could get.

The story was unraveling. Thorin was unraveling, and the mountain loved Thorin like it _didn't_ love the rest of his Company. The rest of his Company did not love the mountain _back._

But Thorin didn't always either, and a story needs _something_.

Thorin was hungry like the mountain, though, and that was enough. His blood, at the end, would drip on the alter-that-was-the-mountain. The ice would drink, slide serpentine into Thorin's last seconds. Or it would, whenever those last seconds occur. Before that, though, it would whisper _Thorin, we're both hungry for gold, aren't we?_

And Thorin would answer back, _yes._

Temptation.

Greed.

Want.

_Thorin, let's tell a story._

(Thorin loved the mountain, yes, and other things, too, but he struggled to disentangle love from other feelings. Love was always difficult for him, tangled as it was, as he felt it had to be.

That was all right, though. The mountain could love enough for both of them soon. And it did, it _did_ love for him.)

The mountain went to Thorin, and Thorin went to Bilbo. And Bilbo Baggins obliged.

The mountain remembered the wizard, then, and called out.

The wizard who popped into and out of the story as needed, who never stated for the duration of anything. The wizard who had never really met the mountain properly.

But the mountain wanted to push its story onward, and for that it told the story: _call out to Gandalf._

Not that the story could find him. Couldnotfindcouldnotfind _cannot_ find.

The Greenwood could not find him. The lake could not find him. The pathways could not find him. The mountain wanted to tell the story to check again, to see if he was with the Dwarves, but first the story--

was distracted, blindingly, by Bilbo Baggins' feet on stone.

 _He would be,_ the story thought, _everything._

The story breathed, the story settled. Here was a push. It still couldn't find Gandalf, but ThorinandBilboand was enough.

(Thorin, worn away by all that circumstance has taken from him, stress and sleeplessness. Thorin.)

(He was Thorin, called Oakenshield.)

(“Was” is such a little word, but it means “past-tense.”)

(But let's not get ahead of ourselves.)

A story is large (a mountain is large, too, with roots that go deep, not like a tree, like something else, Bilbo got that riddle right but the mountain couldn't remember it). A story breathes in the sound of ravenwings and the sighs of weary travelers. Its beating heart is footsteps on pathways and falling rocks and rainstorms and. It is large.

I tell you this so you will understand what I mean when I said the story was _distracted_. Sure, it was dwarvestrappedincells and spidersdying laketownahead flickeringcandlelight elvenkingdeciding lonemen warriors bloodonthewalkways bloodinthetrees bloodinthestory storyblood storybloodbloodbloodblood, but mostly the story was Bilbo Baggins, and the story was Thorin Oakenshield.

Bilbo Baggins is not the mountain. This is not a story about the mountain, after all, it's a story about _Bilbo_ _Baggins,_ who is not the mountain.

 _Thorin_ might be the mountain. You know, symbolically. Could have been. The mountain was learning him, slowly, and soon it would try to be him as he would try to be--

Well.

The dragon would end up bleeding for the lake-that-may-have-been-an-alter. The mountain, it seemed, was thinking increasingly of _sacrifice_. Of remembered ululations and old, heavy blood.

When the dragon dies, it tastes of rust. Blood in the water. Blood in the woods. Blood on the ice. Blood on the mountainpaths. Blood _outside_ the mountain. Thorin will die outside the mountain, too. Which may not be fair, for a Dwarf that spent his days giving himself and taking, again and again, from stone. Not a fair death at all.

The mountain will still get part of him in the end, of course, no matter where he dies. Bilbo Baggins will take the rest and run, keep what remains bound in leather, ink on pages. He's storyblood after all. The mountain will lick blood from its stoneteeth with its rivertongue and follow. Follow. Change the weather to suit the mood (Thrór died), keep the sky clear (Thráin died), listen to the heartbeat-feet on the ground (FíliandKíliand died), keep the roads smooth (Thorin died), follow reflections in water (the Company left).

(This is a story about Bilbo Baggins. It is also a story about blood.)

(The mountain was Thorin, and it was Thrór, and it was Thráin, and it was FíliandKíliand.)

(They will be buried in stone.)

(If the mountain could regret, it might have regretted the fact that so many Dwarves now cannot reclaim it, that so many Dwarves died.)

(But mountains cannot regret. They are stone and slopes and ideas.)

This is a story about Bilbo Baggins. It is also a story about blood.

This is a story about Bilbo Baggins-- about him, and his friends, and a wizard, and a Dwarf he loved, a story about ThorinandFíliandKíliandBifurandBofurandBomburandDoriandNoriandOriandBalinandDwalinandÓinandGlóin; it is about other people, too, but at the heart of it this story is about Bilbo Baggins.

This is not a story about the mountain.

No, no, no.

It is _not_ about the mountain.

(And I don't think the mountain will ever forgive Bilbo Baggins for that.)

 


End file.
